COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

The importance of the ancient philosophers does not lie in their conclusions, but in the originality of their intellectual curiosity, habits, and methods -- that was their genius. Philosophy is the pursuit, not the elusive truth. The party politics of fashionable ideas is for middlebrow dopes. These fashionable ideas will fade out of fashion, but the act, the approach, of posing or framing questions, reasoning through problems (inductively then deductively), and testing ideas will last long after these trendy ideologies have become covered with fly droppings in dusty, second-hand bookstores and moldy basements.

Finally, anyone who believes that some generalizing ideology (Ayn Rand's, or anyone else's) can successfully account for, let alone explain, the fact or experiences of our individual lives is a simpleton, not a philosopher. Anyone who models his life on such one-size-fits-all drivel is an ass.

-- Thomas Giddings, Doctoral Student, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (posted 4/29, 8:32 a.m., E.D.T.)

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